Colorado soldier killed in Korean War identified, returning home
U.S. Army Sgt. Orace Mestas , 22, of Trinidad, was reported missing in action in April of 1951 after his unit was attacked near Chip’o-ri in North Korea.
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After nearly 75 years, a Colorado soldier who died while fighting in the Korean War is finally returning home.
U.S. Army Sgt. Orace Mestas, 22, of Trinidad, was reported missing in action in April of 1951 after his unit was attacked near Chip’o-ri in North Korea, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency.
A surviving member of his unit said Mestas was killed during the April 25, 1951, ambush, agency officials wrote in Mestas’s service profile.
“At the time, the overwhelming enemy fire forced the survivors to withdraw before they could recover their fallen comrades,” officials wrote.
Four bodies were recovered from that area between May and June of 1951, but Mestas’s remains were not positively identified until Jan. 31, 2024, according to the agency.
Mestas’s body was one of 652 Korean War “unknowns” who were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, removed in March 2019 and sent to a laboratory for DNA testing, federal officials said.
Scientists were able to identify Mestas’s remains using dental records, anthropological analysis, DNA testing and chest X-rays, federal officials said.
Mestas’s name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, along with the others who are still missing from the Korean War. Defense officials said a rosette would be placed next to his name to indicate he had been accounted for.
Mestas will be buried in Trinidad, his home, in June.
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